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Taylor Swift tour debacle: Ticketmaster and Live Nation may need breakup, Democratic senators say
Story by Julia Musto • Nov 22

Democratic senators are urging the Justice Department to hold Ticketmaster and owner Live Nation accountable for "failing consumers" following the controversy surrounding Taylor Swift's U.S. leg of "The Eras Tour."

Tennessee AG Skrmetti investigating Ticketmaster over Taylor Swift presale problems
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In a letter on Monday, Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Edward Markey, D-Mass., said the ticket sales and distribution company should be broken up if any misconduct is uncovered in an ongoing investigation.

"An investigation alone does nothing for the stakeholders already harmed by Live Nation’s market dominance and seemingly ongoing anticompetitive behavior," the lawmakers said.

The senators said authorities should consider the "strongest possible remedies," as well as investigate the state of competition in the market for live entertainment.

TAYLOR SWIFT TICKET FIASCO: TICKETMASTER CANCELS PUBLIC SALE OF 'THE ERAS TOUR' DUE TO HIGH DEMAND

Taylor Swift poses in the press room at the American Music Awards at Microsoft Theater on Nov. 20, 2022, in Los Angeles, California. 

Sarah Morris/FilmMagic via Getty Images

"If the investigation reveals that Live Nation has continued to abuse its dominant market position notwithstanding two prior consent decrees, we urge the department to consider unwinding the Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger and breaking up the company," the group added. "This may be the only way to truly protect consumers, artists and venue operators and to restore competition in the ticketing market."

Blumenthal, Klobuchar and Markey said reports of site crashes, hours-long wait times, fluctuating ticket prices and an inability to access refunds indicated that "the department’s past enforcement efforts have failed to protect competition."

Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged in 2010 after a Justice Department-brokered settlement officials said would encourage competition and send ticket prices down.

The senators wrote the company controls an estimated 60% of the market for the promotion of major concerts and events.

They assert that Live Nation's dominant position has "repeatedly harmed consumers," with Ticketmaster prices "more than tripling" over the past two decades.


Sen. Amy Klobuchar speaks during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, Aug. 4, 2022. Alex Wong/Getty Images© Alex Wong/Getty Images

"Put simply, artists, venues and consumers should no longer be at the mercy of a single seller. The department must act to help consumers and the market shake off the effects of this monopoly," the senators concluded.

The Justice Department has proven in recent years much more willing to file antitrust lawsuits against giant companies.

Ticketmaster Faces The Music

The online ticketing giant is now reportedly up against an antitrust investigation after enraging Taylor Swift fans.

Taylor Swift. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

•Jordan Uhl

The online ticketing giant Ticketmaster has been using its monopoly power for years to abuse artists, fans, and venues alike — but now, thanks to a perfect storm of political and cultural factors, not to mention an army of Taylor Swift fans, it could face a long-overdue government thumping now that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is reportedly conducting an antitrust investigation into the company.

Ticketmaster operates as a monopoly in the concerts and live events industry, controlling every stage of the business — from ticket sales to event promotions to venue operations — ever since its merger in 2010 with event promoter and venue operator Live Nation, which the DOJ approved.

The new parent company became Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. One of the conditions in the DOJ’s consent decree for the newly-formed company was a prohibition on retaliating against venues for using other ticketing servicers. Despite this, venues have alleged for years that’s exactly what Live Nation has done. Through this merger, as well as their aggressive tactics, Live Nation Entertainment now controls more than 70 percent of the live event market.

Along with penalizing independent venues and frustrating music fans, Live Nation has also set its sights on the few remaining ways live musicians make money, including demanding cuts of merchandise sales, leaving artists with few options left.

“In typical let-no-tragedy-go-to-waste fashion, Live Nation used the pandemic to scoop up even more clubs who couldn’t afford to keep the lights on,” Max Collins, frontman for rock band Eve 6, told The Lever. “The artists touring the club circuit are lucky if they break even, and this monolithic corporation is putting its scaly claw in their pocket to grab for more. You have them demanding 20 cents or more of every dollar a band makes from selling their own T-shirts and hoodies. The degree to which this company scales artist and fan exploitation would be funny if it wasn’t so fucked up.”
From Ticketer To Sprawling Industry Monopoly

Founded as a ticketing system computer company in 1976, Ticketmaster became the market leader in the ticket industry by buying up competitors like Ticketron and pushing for laws that restricted ticket resales to authorized companies like itself.

As the company has become the dominant ticketing operation, concerns have grown over its monopolistic practices — including how it treats consumers. Event-goers have criticized the ticket retailer for years, arguing the fees tacked onto sales were exorbitant and often disproportionate to the ticket’s face value. A class-action lawsuit, originally filed in 2003, taking aim at these excessive fees was eventually settled in 2014 for $400 million, without Ticketmaster or its parent company Live Nation admitting wrongdoing.

Since then, the company has continued what many believe to be the same predatory practices. Earlier this year, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver reported it had found tickets for events on Ticketmaster with fees ranging around 70 percent of the ticket’s face value and one with fees totaling more than the ticket itself.

Since 2020, Live Nation has spent more than $3 million on federal lobbying, according to OpenSecrets, including on efforts to beat back attempts in Congress to better regulate event ticket markets. Forbes Tate Partners, one lobbying firm employed by Live Nation, has also led the health care industry’s campaign to defeat reform proposals like Medicare for All and a public health insurance option, as well as efforts to lower the Medicare eligibility age. The firm’s work for Live Nation has included lobbying on “issues related to transparency and accountability to ticket sales pricing” and “issues related to antitrust enforcement.”

Live Nation’s leadership and investors have deep ties to the Republican establishment and the conservative billionaire class. Its largest shareholder is Liberty Media Corporation, which also controls a 75 percent stake in the satellite radio company Sirius XM.

At the helm of Liberty Media sits John Malone, a multi-billionaire media mogul, director emeritus and former board member of the right-wing think tank Cato Institute, and prominent donor to Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration as well as various other conservative politicians and causes.

In addition to serving as chairman of Liberty Media, Malone is a major shareholder and sits on the board of directors at Warner Bros. Discovery, now the parent company of CNN. Last year, Malone called for CNN to model itself more like Fox News. In its reporting on Live Nation and Ticketmaster last week, CNN did not disclose this relationship.

As Live Nation has become a major venue operator, it has also worked to rig the venue industry in its favor. Live Nation now owns, operates, or leases at least 165 venues in North America, according to an annual financial report the company filed earlier this year.

As live events were ground to a halt at the onset of the pandemic, independent music venues sought assistance from the government to remain in operation. Congress set aside $15 billion in aid meant for smaller venues, but Live Nation spent lobbied aggressively in order to gain access to those funds, despite being on a much more solid financial footing than small, independent venues.

Around $19 million ended up being allocated to Live Nation subsidiaries as a result of the lobbying effort, according to reporting by The Washington Post. Around the same time, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund funneled around $500 million into Live Nation in exchange for a 5.7 percent stake in the company, making it the company’s third-largest shareholder.

“How Is This Not Extortion?”

Caught in all of this consolidation are smaller artists who already struggle to make a living wage, due to the decline in record sales as fans opt for streaming services. Spotify, the largest music streaming platform owning more than a third of the market, only pays artists between $0.003 and $0.005 cents per stream, and royalties are split among a much broader group than just the performers.

This arrangement pushes artists to tour more, because it’s one of the few remaining ways to be compensated and make a living as a musician. But while on the road, performers are subject to Live Nation’s cuts from ticket sales, as well as additional profiteering by venue owners and promoters.

Artists typically must fork over 20 percent to 30 percent of revenue on all merchandise sales after the show to the venue owner, which is often Live Nation, despite this being one of the last remaining avenues for bands to make money. Few fans even realize they’re handing over more money to companies like Live Nation when they’re buying a T-shirt after seeing their favorite band — and some may complain when asked to tip.

Artists who try to evade venues taking cuts from merchandise sales could potentially face backlash from promoters and venue owners. With Live Nation’s expansive reach throughout the industry, such actions could potentially be a career-killer.

“We have been told by our team many times in the past that we better pay our merch cut and pay it honestly, or we will mess up future opportunities for ourselves. How is this not extortion?” said Jesse Barnett, singer in the hardcore band Stick To Your Guns. “We will show up to a venue and many places will physically count the amount of items we are bringing in and then count us out because they don’t trust that we will give them a ‘correct number.’ Why would we? Why do you deserve a piece of our merch? Did you come up with the designs? Did you get it printed? Did you haul it from show to show? No. Bottom line.”

Several musical artists spoke to The Lever on the condition of anonymity, out of fear of retaliation from Live Nation. All of them expressed frustration with merchandise cuts, but say they had been told there was nothing they could do to challenge them.

With artists and fans alike being nickeled and dimed by industry titans, Collins of Eve 6 worries about a future where upcoming artists won’t be able to tour.

“We really are moving toward a future — if we aren’t already there — where the only artists who can afford to tour are at the Taylor Swift-, Harry Styles-position on the hierarchy,” he said. “Eve 6 did a month-long tour in May and June of this year, and when we looked at the profits and expenses afterwards we were like, ‘Welp, we won’t be doing this again.’”

Swifties On The Attack

But now, finally, Live Nation might have messed with the wrong fan base. Swifties — the moniker for Taylor Swift’s army of strident fans — were roiled last Tuesday when Ticketmaster’s site buckled under the weight of millions of fans trying to snatch up tickets during a limited pre-release for fans chosen at random for her upcoming tour.

The public release was initially scheduled for Friday, but was ultimately postponed due to what Ticketmaster claimed were “extraordinarily high demands” and “insufficient remaining ticket inventory.” This pushed the remaining fans to the secondary, resale market where they were subject to prices upwards of $28,000.

This debacle comes on the heels of Ticketmaster’s “Dynamic Pricing” controversy, a practice where prices for tickets are fluid and driven by demand, resulting in fans attempting to attend the most popular tours being charged rates much higher than face value. While Dynamic Pricing started in 2011, it drew ire at multiple points this year when fans of Bruce Springsteen and Blink-182 were flabbergasted by the astronomical ticket prices and the site’s infrastructure cratering.
Tip Jar

Mark Hoppus, the bassist and co-lead vocalist for Blink-182, acknowledged he tried to buy tickets to two of his shows after hearing what fans were enduring and said his tickets were “yoinked” from his cart and he had “the whole thing crash out.” Conversely, Bruce Springsteen defended the Dynamic Pricing model in an interview with Rolling Stone published last Friday.

Thanks to the Swifties’ ire, calls for Ticketmaster, and ultimately Live Nation Entertainment, to be broken up grew on social media last week and were echoed by prominent political figures.

“Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, its merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reigned [sic] in. Break them up,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted last week.

“Fans of Taylor Swift are learning firsthand about the Ticketmaster horror show and it’s not pretty Swifties. Break up Ticketmaster,” Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) said in a tweet. Pascrell introduced a bill in the 116th Congress aimed at regulating live-event ticket sales and ticket resale markets, as well as providing more transparency in pricing and fees. That bill stalled in committee.

Gregory Maffei, chairman of Live Nation’s board, is a prolific Republican donor who has given more than $900,000 to conservative candidates and causes since the start of the 2016 election cycle. He blamed Taylor Swift’s touring hiatus over the last several years for Ticketmaster’s issues.

“Building capacity for peak demand is something we attempt to do but this exceeded every expectation. And the reality is Taylor Swift hasn’t been on the road for three or four years and that’s caused a huge issue,” said Maffei.

Fans weren’t convinced.

“Obviously it was disappointing to see the way Ticketmaster had chosen to handle things — knowing there were other Swifties who, like me, waited for hours in line and then were unable to get tickets,” said Ellie Schnitt, host of the Taylor Talk podcast on Spotify. “There’s no excuse for it, they knew the demand would be insane and said they could handle it and there was literally no other option.”

The outcry comes at a moment of growing demands for consumer rights in the face of predatory corporate behaviors. The Biden administration, along with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, have made it a priority to crack down on companies and institutions that engage in unscrupulous pricing practices or levy hefty and unnecessary “junk fees” on purchases. The industries range from the financial sector to airlines to the live event ticketing world.

Last week, Pascrell and 31 other Democratic members of the House released a letter calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Live Nation for its business practices and demanding the corporation be broken up.

“There is overwhelming evidence that the merger between the world’s largest concert promoter and the largest ticket provider strangled competition for ticketing in the live entertainment marketplace,” wrote the lawmakers. “While the harm consumers and artists have endured for over a decade cannot be reversed, ticketing and venue competitors, fans, and local music communities would breathe a collective sigh of relief if the merger were undone.”

That same day, the New York Times reported that the DOJ has launched an antitrust investigation into LiveNation Entertainment. In a statement published Friday evening, the company issued a statement claiming it “does not engage in behaviors that could justify antitrust litigation, let alone orders that would require it to alter fundamental business practices.”

In its annual financial report earlier this year, the company acknowledged that antitrust investigations may pose substantial risk to its business.

“In the case of antitrust (and similar or related) matters,” the company wrote, “any adverse outcome could limit or prevent us from engaging in the ticketing business generally (or in a particular segment thereof) or subject us to potential damage assessments, all of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.”

Mexican health authorities give green light to Cuban COVID-19 vaccine Soberana

By Murphy Woodhouse

Published: Monday, November 21, 2022 - 

Mexican health authorities have given emergency approval to a Cuban-made COVID-1 vaccine.

Over the weekend, Cofepris, Mexico’s food and drug safety agency, granted that authorization to the Cuban vaccine Soberana, adding to the now near dozen approved for use in Mexico. The Cuban vaccine Abdala is also on that list.

Because Cofepris is recognized by the Pan American Health Organization as what is known as a national regulatory authority of regional reference, the recent approval could pave the way for the vaccine’s use in other Latin American countries.

The development also comes as a new coronavirus variant has been detected in Mexico, though reportedly not yet in Sonora.

Vatican vendettas: Alleged witness manipulation jolts trial

By NICOLE WINFIELD

Italian communications expert Francesca Chaouqui talks to journalists July 7, 2016, after a Vatican court convicted her and a Vatican monsignor for having conspired to pass documents to two Italian journalist. A Vatican trial into a money-losing investment has been jolted by revelations that a key prosecution witness was apparently manipulated into changing his story and cooperating with prosecutors. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis, File)


VATICAN CITY (AP) — The text message to the Vatican monsignor offered forgiveness along with a threat: “I know everything about you … and I keep it all in my archives,” it read. “I pardon you, Perlasca, but remember, you owe me a favor.”

The message was one of more than 100 newly revealed WhatsApp texts and other correspondence entered into evidence at the Vatican courthouse last week that have jolted a financial crimes trial involving the Holy See’s money-losing investment in a London property.

The texts have cast doubt on the credibility of a key suspect-turned-prosecution witness and raised questions about the integrity of the investigation into the London deal and other transactions.

Together with evidence that a cardinal secretly recorded Pope Francis, they confirmed that a trial originally aimed at highlighting Francis’ financial reforms has become a Pandora’s Box of unintended revelations about Vatican vendettas and scheming.

The trial in the city-state’s criminal tribunal originated in the Holy See’s 350 million-euro investment to develop a former warehouse for department store Harrods into luxury apartments.

Prosecutors have accused 10 people in the case, alleging Vatican monsignors and brokers fleeced the Holy See of tens of millions of euros in fees and commissions, and then extorted the Holy See of 15 million euros to get full control of the property.

Monsignor Alberto Perlasca initially was among the prime suspects. As the Vatican official who managed the secretariat of state’s 600 million-euro asset portfolio, he was intimately involved in the property deal.

But Perlasca changed his story in August 2020 and started cooperating with prosecutors, blaming his deputy and his superior, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, then the No. 2 in the secretariat of state, for the London investment and other questionable expenditures.

Both the deputy and Becciu are on trial. Perlasca is not, and his statements to prosecutors became a source of leads that formed the basis of several charges in the indictment.

When Perlasca testified for the prosecution last week, some of his claims collapsed under defense questioning. Judge Giuseppe Pignatone gave Perlasca until midweek to remember who helped him write his first tell-all memo on Aug. 31, 2020.

And then came a bombshell, courtesy of the text messages that the prosecutor was compelled to introduce into evidence after he received them. They suggested Perlasca wrote the memo implicating his boss after he had received threats and advice from a woman who had an ax to grind against Becciu.

Public relations specialist Francesca Chaouqui previously served on a papal commission tasked with investigating the Vatican’s vast and murky financials. She is known in Vatican circles for her role in the “Vatileaks” scandal of 2015-2016, when she was convicted of conspiring to leak confidential Vatican documents to journalists and received a 10-month suspended sentence.

According to the texts, Chaouqui nurtured a grudge against Becciu, whom she blamed for allegedly supporting her prosecution. She apparently saw the investigation into the London real estate venture as a chance to settle scores and implicate Becciu in alleged wrongdoing she had uncovered during her commission days.

“I knew that sooner or later the moment would come and I would send you this message,” Chaouqui wrote Perlasca on May 12, 2020. “Because the Lord doesn’t allow the good to be humiliated without repair. I pardon you Perlasca, but remember, you owe me a favor.”

Chaouqui didn’t say what she wanted. But other messages unveiled in court indicate she persuaded a Perlasca family friend and confidante, Genoveffa Ciferri, that she could help Perlasca avoid prosecution if he followed Chaouqui’s advice.

According to Ciferri’s texts, the elaborate scheme allegedly unfolded as follows: Ciferri believed Chaouqui when she bragged that she was working hand-in-hand with Vatican prosecutors, gendarmes and the pope in the criminal investigation. Ciferri wanted to help Perlasca, and so fed him Chaouqui’s advice anonymously.

Chaouqui subsequently organized a dinner at a Rome restaurant during which Perlasca tried to extract incriminating information from Becciu. Perlasca was led to believe the Vatican prosecutors had bugged the table and were recording their conversation, though no recording has materialized. He provided them with a detailed memo after the Sept. 6, 2020 meal.

The dinner took place 18 days before Francis fired Becciu and stripped him of his rights as a cardinal based on information he said he had received about Becciu’s alleged financial misconduct.

Ciferri confessed the whole saga to prosecutor Alessandro Diddi in a Nov. 26 text in which she said she had schemed with Chaouqui in hopes of sparing Perlasca from becoming a criminal defendant. Ciferri forwarded Diddi 126 text messages she exchanged with Chaouqui and said Chaouqui had helped craft the August 2020 memo in which Perlasca turned on the cardinal.

The implications of Chaouqui’s alleged interference were clear to those in the courtroom: Perlasca, a key prosecution witness, may have been persuaded to provide possibly false testimony about Becciu and others by someone with a not-so-hidden agenda. In addition, Chaouqui bragged about working closely with investigators on the case.

Becciu’s lawyer, Fabio Viglione, denounced the “surreal” machinations that helped lead to his client’s indictment, saying Perlasca had been manipulated “to the detriment of the truth, the authenticity of the investigation and the honorability of His Eminence.”

Cataldo Intrieri, the lawyer representing Perlasca’s deputy Fabrizio Tirabassi, said the revelations warrant the trial’s suspension and the opening of a new criminal investigation for suspected fraud, threats and obstruction. “Regardless, there are implications for the facts that are the subject of this trial,” Intrieri said.

Judge Pignatone rejected defense calls to suspend the trial, saying the proceedings were based more on documentation about the London deal than Perlasca’s testimony. But he scheduled in-court interrogations for Ciferri and Chaouqui.

Chaouqui, when reached by The Associated Press, declined to comment before her court testimony.

Diddi defended the investigation, strongly denied having any dealings with Chaouqui before she was questioned in July and announced he had opened a new investigation into possible false testimony and other potential crimes based on the texts he received from Ciferri. He offered to turn over his cell phone to show he had no dealings with Chaouqui.

“If someone brags about having knowledge (of the investigation) I have to investigate,” he said.

Some defense lawyers also privately complained that Diddi had evidence in February 2021 of Chaouqui’s alleged involvement with Perlasca but didn’t inform the defense, part of broader defense complaints about the peculiarities of the Vatican’s legal system. Diddi acknowledged last week that Ciferri phone him on Feb. 4, 2021 and mentioned Chaouqui’s name.

Diddi also heard from Perlasca on March 1, 2022, when the monsignor filed a formal complaint alleging Chaouqui had threatened him and claimed to be working with prosecutors. The written complaint was only entered into evidence last week. Defense lawyers said it was their first inkling that Perlasca might be a compromised prosecution witness.

“She sent me threatening messages via telephone, saying I was in her hands and that only she could save me from certain prison, making clear she could influence the investigators,” Perlasca wrote in his complaint.

Chaouqui was in touch with Perlasca as recently as Nov. 26. She texted him after his first court appearances and suggested they meet before he went back on the stand.

“My interest, and I think yours, is that my support not emerge at trial because it would be difficult to explain above all the consequences that it had,” she wrote.

Negotiators take first steps toward plastic pollution treaty

By JENNIFER McDERMOTT

December 2, 2022

1 of 9

 City workers remove garbage floating on the Negro River, which has a rising water level due to rain, in Manaus, Amazonas state, Brazil, June 6, 2022. More than 2,000 experts plan to wrap up early negotiations Friday, Dec. 2, on plastic pollution at one of the largest global gatherings ever to address the crisis. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros, File)


More than 2,000 experts wrapped up a week of negotiations on plastic pollution Friday, at one of the largest global gatherings ever to address what even industry leaders in plastics say is a crisis.

It was the first meeting of a United Nations committee set up to draft what is intended to be a landmark treaty to bring an end to plastic pollution globally.

“The world needs this treaty because we are producing plastics by the billions,” said Jyoti Mathur-Filipp, executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for plastics in an interview with The Associated Press. “Billions of tons of plastics are being produced every year and there is absolutely no way to ensure that this plastic doesn’t end up in the environment.”

Entire beaches on what used to be pristine islands are now mounded with trash. Examination of a random handful of sand in many places reveals pieces of plastic.

Trash and plastics litter the sand of Yarakh Beach in Dakar, Senegal, Nov. 8, 2022.

 (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

The United Nations Environment Programme held the meeting in a city known for its beaches, Punta del Este, Uruguay, from Monday through Friday.

Delegates from more than 150 countries, plastic industry representatives, environmentalists, scientists, waste pickers, tribal leaders and others affected by the pollution attended in person or virtually. Waste pickers are seeking recognition of their work and a just transition to fairly remunerated, healthy and sustainable jobs.

Even in this first meeting of five planned over the next two years, factions came into focus. Some countries pressed for top-down global mandates, some for national solutions and others for both. If an agreement is eventually adopted, it would be the first legally-binding global treaty to combat plastic pollution.

Leading the industry point of view was the American Chemistry Council, a trade association for chemical companies. Joshua Baca, vice president of the plastics division, said companies want to work with governments on the issue because they also are frustrated by the problem. But he said they won’t support production restrictions, as some countries want.

A boat moves through garbage floating on the basin of the Cerron Grande hydroelectric dam near Potonico, El Salvador, Sept. 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)

“The challenge is very simple. It is working to ensure that used plastics never enter the environment,” Baca said. “A top-down approach that puts a cap or a ban on production does nothing to address the challenges that we face from a waste management perspective.”

The United States, a top plastic-producing country, agrees national plans allow governments to prioritize the most important sources and types of plastic pollution.

Most plastic is made from fossil fuels. Other plastic-producing and oil and gas countries also called for putting the responsibility on individual nations. China’s delegate said it would be hard to effectively control global plastic pollution with one or even several universal approaches.

Saudi Arabia’s delegate also said each country should determine its own action plan, with no standardization or harmonization among them. Plastic plays a vital role in sustainable development, the delegate said, so the treaty should recognize the importance of continuing plastic production while tackling the root cause of the pollution, which he identified as poor waste management.

A child sits inside a canoe with empty plastic bottles he collected to sell for recycling in the floating slum of Makoko in Lagos, Nigeria, Nov. 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Some referred to these countries as the “low ambition” group. Andrés Del Castillo, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, said that while national plans are important, they should not be the treaty’s backbone because that’s the system — or lack of one — that the world already has.

“We don’t see a point of meeting five times with experts all around the world to discuss voluntary actions, when there are specific control measures that are needed that can aim to reduce, then eliminate plastic pollution in the world,” he said after participating in the discussions Thursday. “It’s a transboundary problem.”

The secretary general of the United Nations Antonio Guterres chimed in with a tweet: “Plastics are fossil fuels in another form & pose a serious threat to human rights, the climate & biodiversity,” it read.

The self-named “high ambition coalition” of countries want an end to plastic pollution by 2040, using an ambitious, effective international legally-binding instrument. They’re led by Norway and Rwanda.

Norway’s delegate to the meeting said plastic production and use must be curbed, and the first priority should be to identify which plastic products, polymers and chemical additives would bring the fastest benefit if phased out.

Litter and debris blanket the shoreline in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, March 10, 2022. 

(AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

African nations, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru and others called for a global approach too, arguing that voluntary and fragmented national plans won’t address the magnitude of plastic pollution. Small island countries that rely on the ocean for food and livelihoods spoke of being overwhelmed by plastic waste washing up on their shores. Developing countries said they need financial support to combat plastic pollution.

Australia, the United Kingdom and Brazil said international obligations should complement national action.

Tadesse Amera, an environmental scientist, said the treaty should address not only waste but the environmental health issues posed by chemicals in plastics as the products are used, recycled, discarded or burned as waste. Amera is the director of Pesticide Action Nexus Association Ethiopia and co-chair of the International Pollutants Elimination Network.

“It’s not a waste management issue,” he said. “It’s a chemical issue and a health issue, human health and also biodiversity.”

A man collects items along a polluted coastal area in Metro Manila, Philippines, Sept. 16, 2022. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

People from communities affected by the industry went to the meeting to ensure their voices are heard throughout the treaty talks. That included Frankie Orona, executive director of the Society of Native Nations in Texas.

“There’s a lack of inclusion from those that are directly negatively impacted by this industry. And they need to be at the table,” he said. “A lot of times they have solutions.”

Orona said the talks seem focused, so far, on reducing plastic, when governments should aim higher.

“We need to completely break free from plastics,” he said.

Mathur-Filipp said that for the next meeting, she will write a draft of what a legally-binding agreement would look like. Organizers don’t want this to take a decade, she said. The next meeting is planned for the spring in France.

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Nevada toad in geothermal power fight gets endangered status

By SCOTT SONNER

December 2, 2022


A Dixie Valley toad sits atop grass in Dixie Valley, Nev., on April 6, 2009. The tiny Nevada toad at the center of a legal battle over a geothermal project has officially been declared an endangered species after U.S. wildlife officials temporarily listed it on a rarely-used emergency basis in the spring of 2022. The spectacled, quarter-sized amphibian "is currently at risk of extinction throughout its range primarily due to the approval and commencement of geothermal development," the service said. Other threats to the toad include groundwater pumping, agriculture, climate change, disease and predation from bullfrogs. (Matt Maples/Nevada Department of Wildlife via AP, File)


RENO, Nev. (AP) — A tiny Nevada toad at the center of a legal battle over a geothermal power project has officially been declared an endangered species, after U.S. wildlife officials temporarily listed it on a rarely used emergency basis last spring.

“This ruling makes final the listing of the Dixie Valley toad, ” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said in a formal rule published Friday in the Federal Register.

The spectacled, quarter-sized amphibian “is currently at risk of extinction throughout its range primarily due to the approval and commencement of geothermal development,” the service said.

Other threats to the toad include groundwater pumping, agriculture, climate change, disease and predation from bullfrogs.

The temporary listing in April marked only the second time in 20 years the agency had taken such emergency action.

Environmentalists who first petitioned for the listing in 2017 filed a lawsuit in January to block construction of the geothermal power plant on the edge of the wetlands where the toad lives about 100 miles (160 kilometers) east of Reno — the only place it’s known to exist on earth.

“We’re pleased that the Biden administration is taking this essential step to prevent the extinction of an irreplaceable piece of Nevada’s special biodiversity,” said Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin regional director for the Center for Biological Diversity.

The center and a tribe fighting the project say pumping hot water from beneath the earth’s surface to generate carbon-free power would adversely affect levels and temperatures of surface water critical to the toad’s survival and sacred to the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe.

The Fish and Wildlife Service cited those concerns in the final listing rule.

“The best available information indicates that a complete reduction in spring flow and significant reduction of water temperature are plausible outcomes of the geothermal project, and these conditions could result in the species no longer persisting,” the agency said.

“Because the species occurs in only one spring system and has not experienced habitat changes of the magnitude or pace projected, it may have low potential to adapt to a fast-changing environment,” it said. “We find that threatened species status is not appropriate because the threat of extinction is imminent.”

Officials for the Reno-based developer, Ormat Technology, said the service’s decision was “not unexpected” given the emergency listing in April. In recent months, the company has been working with the agency and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to modify the project to increase mitigation for the toad and reduce any threat to its survival.

The lawsuit over the original plan to build two power plants capable of producing 60MW of electricity is currently before U.S. District Judge Robert Jones in Reno. It’s already has made one trip to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which refused in August to grant a temporary injunction blocking construction of the power plant the bureau approved in December 2021.

But just hours after that ruling, Ormat announced it had agreed to temporarily suspend all work on the project until next year. Then in late October, the bureau and Ormat asked the judge to put the case on hold while Ormat submitted a new plan to build just one geothermal plant, at least for now, that would produce only 12MW of power.

Ormat Vice President Paul Thomsen said in an email to The Associated Press on Thursday that the company disagrees with the wildlife service’s “characterization of the potential impacts” of its project as a basis for the listing decision. He said it doesn’t change the ongoing coordination and consultation already under way to minimize and mitigate any of those impacts “regardless of its status under the Endangered Species Act.”

“Following the emergency listing decision, BLM began consultation with the FWS, and Ormat has sought approval of a smaller project authorization that would provide additional assurances that the species will not be jeopardized by geothermal development,” he said.

“As a zero-emissions, renewable energy facility, the project will further the Biden administration’s clean energy initiatives and support the fight against climate change,” Thomsen said.

Donnelly agreed renewable energy is “essential to combating the climate emergency.”

“But it can’t come at the cost of extinction,” he said.

The last time endangered species protection first was initiated on an emergency basis was in 2011, when the Obama administration took action on the Miami blue butterfly in southern Florida. Before that, an emergency listing was granted for the California tiger salamander under the Bush administration in 2002.

Other species listed as endangered on an emergency basis over the years include the California bighorn sheep in the Sierra Nevada in 1999, Steller sea lions in 1990, and the Sacramento River winter migration run of chinook salmon and Mojave desert tortoise, both in 1989.

US Feral hog control: 8 years, some progress, $2.5B damage/year

By JANET McCONNAUGHEY

December 2, 2022

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Two feral hogs are caught in a trap on a farm in rural Washington County, Mo., Jan. 27, 2019. Eight years into a U.S. program to control damage from feral pigs, the invasive animals are still a multibillion-dollar plague on farmers, wildlife and the environment. (David Carson/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP)


NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Eight years into a U.S. program to control damage from feral pigs, the invasive animals with big appetites and snouts that uproot anything that smells good are still a multibillion-dollar plague on farmers, wildlife and the environment.

These prolific hogs gone wild have been wiped out in 11 of the 41 states where they were reported in 2014 or 2015, and there are fewer in parts of the other 30.

But despite more than $100 million in federal money, an estimated 6 million to 9 million feral swine still ravage the landscape nationwide. They tear up planted fields, wallowing out huge bare depressions. They out-eat deer and turkeys — and also eat turkey eggs and even fawns. They carry parasites and disease and pollute streams and rivers with their feces.

Total U.S. damages are estimated at a minimum $2.5 billion a year.

Adam McLendon, whose family farms about 8,000 acres (3,200 hectares) of peanuts, corn and cotton in several counties in southwestern Georgia, estimates feral pigs have cost them more than $100,000 a year for the past 15 years.

That’s about what one of Mississippi’s two levee boards pays each year to trap and kill feral hogs and to repair damage from their rooting, commissioner Hank Burdine estimated. “That is nominal compared to what we would have if we didn’t take care of it and had a flood,” he added.

Near the Red River in north Texas, hogs are so hard on corn that Layne Chapman and his neighbors no longer even try to grow it.

“I can remember the first day someone called me and said, ‘You’ve got a pig in your wheat field,’ and I said, ‘No we don’t have pigs.’ That was in 2006,” Chapman said. He stopped planting corn in 2016.

The animals root out rows of freshly planted peanuts and corn, leaving huge ruts that must be smoothed before the field can be replanted -- weeks after the best planting time. Hogs return to cornfields when the crop is ripening, trampling stalks, taking bites out of ears and wallowing to cool their sweatless bodies.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Feral Swine Damage Management Program has received $31.5 million since it began in 2014.

McLendon and Chapman, who continues to grow cotton and wheat and to raise cattle on about 8,000 acres (3,200 hectares) in Vernon, Texas, have both benefited from pilot eradication projects under $75 million allocated separately by Congress in the 2018 Farm Bill.

Research also continues on ways to poison feral hogs without killing other animals, said Michael Marlow, assistant manager of the USDA program. The poison, sodium nitrite, is a preservative in bacon but keeps the blood of live pigs from carrying oxygen.

Trials this coming winter and spring will test whether birds can be kept away from dropped bait by using a less crumbly formulation, along with grates to keep crumbs out of reach and air-powered “scarymen” like air dancers used for store advertising, Marlow said.

But for now, two major control methods are aerial shooting and remote-controlled traps that send cellphone pictures when a hog sounder is inside.

Some states have legalized night hunting for feral swine. Derek Chisum, who grows peanuts, cotton and wheat in Hydro, Oklahoma, figures he has killed 120 to 150 a year since Oklahoma did so three years ago.

Since 2014, Idaho, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Maine, Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Washington, Wisconsin and Vermont have killed their small populations of feral pigs, though the program is still keeping a wary eye out in the last six states.

The worst-hit states — California, Oklahoma, Texas and Florida, where a runway collision with a pair of wild pigs totaled an F-16 fighter jet in 1988 — are still at the program’s highest level, with more than 750,000 hogs. Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina put their populations at 100,000 to 750,000, though Hawaii has moved a level down.

The Texas population overall has been “fairly stable” at roughly 3 million since 2011, said Mike Bodenchuk, state director for USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS.

But statewide reduction, let alone eradication, is likely to be a long slog with tools and money available now, he said in a telephone interview.

That means killing a lot of swine, though a widely repeated figure -- that hogs are so prolific that 70% of those in a given area must be killed each year to keep numbers stable -- just isn’t right, said Kim Pepin, a research biologist at USDA’s National Wildlife Research Center in Fort Collins, Colorado.

To reduce populations, you only need to kill more than are born each year — and growth rates vary in different environments, Pepin said. “If you want to know growth rates, you need to do monitoring,” she said.

In Texas, the four-county Upper Red River Watershed Project and other intense efforts paid by the Farm Bill have made a significant dent in target areas, Bodenchuk said. But those cover only 16 of the state’s 254 counties.

The bill is paying for 34 eradication projects in limited areas of a dozen states.

In Texas, APHIS is targeting areas with the worst damage, teaching landowners how to continue the work after Farm Bill projects end in 2023, and leaving resources such as loaner traps -- each $7,000 or more -- to help “while we move the program across the landscape,” Bodenchuck said.

“Even using this approach, we won’t have the resources to eradicate pigs in Texas in my lifetime,” he wrote in an email.

Researchers are still trying to get good numbers for populations and damages. The current estimate of at least $2.5 billion in annual national damages is up $1 billion from the 2014 estimate, and the number of pigs is now estimated at 6 million to 9 million rather than 5 million.

But those don’t indicate actual increases, said Marlow, the national assistant program manager. “I think we just have a better handle on it,” he said.

The agency has been making surveys to improve damage estimates, but they’re still limited — such as damage to six top crops in 11 states. And the figures are likely low, leaving out costs such as extra time and fuel needed to harvest hog-damaged fields, said Sophie McKee, a research economist at the wildlife research center where Pepin works.

When a small group of farmers and ranchers was asked to consider those costs, their damage estimates nearly tripled, McKee said.

Chapman, the Red River farmer, said such costs can be difficult to assess. For instance, he said, if hogs root on the low side of an irrigated farm “it won’t ever drain again.”

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To follow AP news about invasive species, see https://apnews.com/hub/invasive-species. ___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

European security org faces existential crisis at meeting

By VANESSA GERA

December 2, 2022

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Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Zbigniew Rau, center, delivers a closing speech during a high-level meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Lodz, Poland, Friday, Dec. 2, 2022. OSCE, a security organization born in the Cold War to maintain peace in Europe, ended a high-level meeting Friday without a final resolution, underlining the existential crisis it is facing amid Russia's war against Ukraine. 

(AP Photo/Michal Dyjuk)


LODZ, Poland (AP) — A security organization born in the Cold War to maintain peace in Europe ended a high-level meeting Friday without a final resolution, underlining the existential crisis it is facing amid Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The war launched by one member of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe against another has created hurdles for the 57-nation group. It makes decisions based on the consensus of all members, which rendered it impossible for the vast majority that condemn the war to get through a final resolution opposing Russia’s aggression.

Running through the two-day meeting of foreign ministers and other representatives, the OSCE’s first such high-level meeting since the Feb. 24 invasion, was the question of how it can continue to function without consensus from Russia and its ally Belarus, which say they have been unfairly isolated.

“I have no doubts that in the next few years it will be extremely difficult for this organization to deliver on its mandate,” Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau said at a concluding news conference. Poland currently holds the organization’s rotating chair.

The problems facing the organization predate the war. Russia has hampered decisions on budgets, senior appointments and other critical work for years.

The Vienna-based OSCE has a wide-ranging mission to protect peace, with a strong emphasis placed on human rights in addition to arms control and other military security issues. The organization is best known to the public for its role in monitoring elections.

But it has struggled amid a real war. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the organization evacuated its staff members working on a peace mission in Ukraine, where Moscow-backed separatists in the east had fought Ukrainian forces for the previous eight years.

Three Ukrainian employees remain “unlawfully detained” by Russian forces in eastern Ukraine since April, OSCE Secretary-General Helga Schmid said Friday.

Still, Schmid argued that the organization was “not paralyzed” and said it was finding ways to work around Russia’s obstruction, for instance by using a donor-funded program to do demining work and to help survivors of sexual violence in Ukraine.

Notably absent from the conference was Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who was banned from entering Poland because he is on a European Union sanctions list. Lavrov spent 40 minutes of a news conference in Moscow on Thursday complaining about his exclusion as the meeting opened in Lodz, Poland.

North Macedonia is set to take over chairing the OSCE in 2023. Bujar Osmani, the country’s foreign minister, said that despite all the obstacles he would not declare this week’s meeting a failure.

It “took place against the backdrop of an all-out war in Europe, unprecedented circumstances since this organization has been established,” Osmani said, adding that many participants agreed the OSCE was needed, especially now.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said the OSCE’s recent meeting had been vital for showing a united front against Russia, and that the organization was finding “creative ways” to get around Russian vetoes.

“Of course this has been the most difficult year for the OSCE since it was founded, but in my view it was also the most important year,” she told reporters in Berlin Friday, after returning from Poland.

The OSCE was established in 1975 and became a platform for dialogue during the Cold War.

Some members were critical of Poland for banning Lavrov from the meeting in Lodz and voiced hope that North Macedonia’s chairmanship next year will create new openings for dialogue in the organization.

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Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

IMPERIALI$M IN SPACE

U.S. Space Force activates Florida operations at MacDill Air Force Base


A new U.S. Space Force command called SPACECENT was activated Friday at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla. It will be part of the U.S. military Central Command. Pictured is the U.S. Space Force flag. Photo by Wikimedia Commons

Dec. 2 (UPI) -- A new U.S. Space Force command called SPACECENT was activated Friday at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla. It's the second regional headquarters and will be part of U.S. Central Command.

SPACECENT will be led by Col. Christopher Putman and will have a staff of 28.

"Just as the evolution of space as a warfighting domain necessitated the establishment of a separate service, SPACECENT provides CENTCOM a subordinate command focused solely and continuously on space integration across the command -- with all domains and all components," Col. Putman said in a statement.

According to U.S. Central Command, SPACECENT will directly report to the CENTCOM commander and "is responsible for the execution of space operations" within the CENTCOM.

SPACECENT will be responsible for satellite-based navigation, missile launch detection and communications with troops in the U.S. Central Command region.

The Space Force was spun off from the U.S. Air Force in 2019 as a separate military service within the Department of the Air Force.

In 2020 the Space Force used information from space-based infrared satellites to warn U.S. troops that Iran had fired more than a dozen missiles at their base in Iraq.

U.S. Central Command said in a statement that activating the SPACECENT command in Florida provides a cadre of space experts "who work with allies and partners to integrate space activities into shared operations."

Central Command said that enhances the ability to promote security and regional stability while also advancing U.S. partnerships in the region throughout the space domain.

US to launch new Space Force command in Indo-Pacific amid N. Korean missile provocations

By Yonhap


The image shows the scheduled launch of a new US Space Force Indo-Pacific Command. 

(US Indo-Pacific's Twitter)

WASHINGTON -- The US Space Force is setting up a new component command in the Indo-Pacific, US Indo-Pacific Command said Monday, in a move believed to be aimed at enhancing US defense capabilities against ballistic missile threats posed mainly by China but also North Korea.

In a message posted on its Twitter account, INDOPACOM said the new US Space Force Indo-Pacific Command will be launched on Tuesday.

It will be the first Space Force command to be established under any combatant command such as INDOPACOM.

The Space Force was established in December 2019, with a mission to "protect the interests of the United States in space, deter aggression in, from and to space, and conduct space operations."

Threats from space include intercontinental ballistic missiles and hypersonic missiles, according to those familiar with the issue.

North Korea conducted a record 63 ballistic missile tests this year, including eight ICBM tests, according to US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

Pyongyang also claims to have successfully test-fired hypersonic missiles in January.

The new Space Force Command, once established, is expected to help improve US abilities to detect and intercept ballistic missiles originating from countries in the region.

Space Force Lt. Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, deputy chief for operations, cyber and nuclear, was earlier quoted as saying that the Space Force will seek to establish component commands at combatant commands where the threat to the US homeland is most acute, such as INDOPACOM, US European Command and US Central Command. (Yonhap)

BACTERIA LOVES ORGANIC SOAP
The Laundress recalls 8 million cleaning products due to bacteria risk


The Laundress said that it was recalling eight million products due to a bacteria risk. Photo from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission



Dec. 2 (UPI) -- The Laundress announced that it was recalling more than eight million laundry and cleaning products because they may be contaminated with bacteria.

In a recall notice posted by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission on Thursday, the Unilever subsidiary that it found different types of bacteria when testing some of its products.

The Laundress also said that it knows of 11 people who have reported pseudomonas infections and is investigating to see if there is a connection to the recalled products.

According to CBS News, the company initially posted a notice on November 17, urging customers to stop using its products completely. "We have identified the potential presence of elevated levels of bacteria in some of our products that present a safety concern."

"People with weakened immune systems, external medical devices and underlying lung conditions, who are exposed to the bacteria face a risk of serious infection that may require medical treatment," the recall notice said. "The bacteria can enter the body if inhaled, or through the eyes or a break in the skin. People with healthy immune systems are usually not affected by the bacteria."

The recalled products are sold online websites including Amazon.com and TheLaundress.com and stores including Bloomingdale's, Brooklinen, The Container Store, Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue and Target. They typically sell for $8 to $100.

French rail strike causes widespread weekend train cancelations

"It is a strike that we did not see coming, neither we nor the unions," 

SNCF Chief Executive Jean-Pierre Farandou 

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Passengers wait on the platform during the SNCF conductors strike at Gare de Lyon train station in Paris on Friday. Photo by Yoan Valat/EPA-EFE

Dec. 3 (UPI) -- France's state state-owned railway company says it has canceled more than half of its scheduled trips this weekend due to a nationwide strike by rail conductors.

SNCF imposed the drastic service cutbacks as about 10,000 conductors were on strike Saturday demanding better work conditions.

The three-day job action is expected to last until Sunday evening.

The cancelations severely affected rail traffic between France and Switzerland, where only one out of every three trains normally scheduled were running.

Trains to Switzerland and Italy were cut by two-thirds, trains to Germany were cut by half, while all trains to Spain were canceled, SCNF said.

Around 3,000 of the striking workers are employed by French intercity service providers, where they conduct passenger safety and traffic operations. Nearly 60% of intercity, or TGV, train service was canceled over the weekend.

Service is expected to gradually return to normal on Monday.

Union leaders say the strike is meant to draw more attention to rules requiring that members work three weekends per month and sleep away from home for more than 10 nights per month.

The conductors' union met twice with management without progress before the strike. Other unions joined in support, and have filed strike notice for both the Christmas and New Year's weekends to put pressure on SNCF.

The strike comes before the start of mandatory annual salary negotiations between the carrier and the French rail unions, which begin next week.

"It is a strike that we did not see coming, neither we nor the unions," SNCF Chief Executive Jean-Pierre Farandou told Swissinfo ahead of the weekend's slowdown.